Before The Storm
by somehowunbroken
Summary: Amelie would do anything for her little brother, no matter the cost. Part of my Virus'verse and will make no sense unless you've read those stories. Rating for violence and somewhat disturbing behvavior.


Summary: Amelie would do anything for her little brother, no matter the cost.  
Notes: This is a part of the Virus'verse. It's a prologue, of sorts, giving more of the backstory about how the Wraith virus came to be. It doesn't mention any SG characters at all, but it's related to the 'verse.  
Other notes: It's set in France, and there's a little French in it; please excuse any butchering that I committed in/to that language. My French is perfectly horrid. (I should have set in in Spain. At least I speak Spanish...)

* * *

It began, as so many things, do, with an idea that should better the world.

Her name was Amelie Leveque, daughter of Jean-Marc and Birtrette, but that isn't important. The important part is that Amelie was the older sister of a particularly fragile little boy named Charles, and that she loved him more than anything, more than she imagined anyone loving anyone else.

Charles was born prematurely when Amelie was twenty-five herself. Her parents called him their miracle baby, _nous petit_. Amelie told him that he put the blue in the sky and the green in the trees, and that she adored him. For his part, little Charles idolized his older sister, smiling and clapping when she entered the room and pouting when she left. By he time Charles was celebrating his first birthday, Amelie was certain that she would do anything for the little boy.

She never dreamed that she would soon be put to the test on her convictions.

Charles began coughing in his nineteenth month, great hacking coughs that wracked his tiny body. When a fit came on, he would cough so long and hard that he would waver on his little feet, falling to the floor with strangled sobs. His parents took him to doctor after doctor, and Amelie took time from her studies at the Université de Paris to care for her brother, but little Charles' health continued to deteriorate rapidly.

Amelie was a student of medicine, and when doctor upon specialist upon hospital failed to cure Charles, to even diagnose him, Anelie turned to her craft, searching desperately in book after book for the answers to the toddler's health mysteries. She spent days, weeks, combining chemicals and natural remedies, everything that she could think of to mend tiny bruised lungs and weakened heart. Finally, she hit upon a combination that seemed to soothe, to calm, and to heal.

Amelie was hailed in the medical community for her efforts, but she turned down the accolades, happy enough that her dear brother was returning to health. She turned her focus to creating a vaccination for the illness, hoping to prevent other families' pain. The results came through just as Charles relapsed, the coughing and gasping returning worse than before. The normally cheerful, energetic child was confined to his bed, and Amelie watched in ever-increasing panic and horror as her magical medicine was administered and did nothing. She threw herself back into her work, starting from scratch to find a more permanent cure.

The work was agonizingly slow, and Amelie sometimes wondered if the greater kindness would be to ease her brother's pain instead of trying to cure him. It was more than a year later when she finally came across a combination that might work, might stop the spread of illness in Charles, might restore the exuberant spirit and strength of body that he should be enjoying as a child of five.

Amelie debated on the best method of delivery for her new treatment. The last had been administered by injection, and Amelie had designed this to work the same way. The problem lay with Charles himself; he was, at this point, very weak, and Amelie feared that he would die before the blood running slowly through his veins had the chance to distribute the medicine throughout his body. It was after much thought and worry and prayer that she coated a scalpel with the drug, positioned it directly over her young brother's heart, and cut a shallow line into his skin.

The medicine began to work within a matter of minutes. Charles' breathing became deep and even, his heart beat strongly, and he settled into the first restful sleep he had experienced in more than a year.

Sometimes, however, the cure is worse than the disease, and it was not long before Charles began to change. The cut that Amelie made to administer the medication faded to pink, but thin blue lines arced from the center in tendrils. His body temperature dropped, his skin and eyes turned unnatural colors, and his hair whitened and grew long. It was only three days after Amelie administered the drug that she entered his room and found a completely different child in his place.

Charles was strong, though, and healthy, and that was all that mattered to Amelie. When their parents passed away, Amelie took her brother to the countryside, and she watched joyfully as he grew older, taller, stronger.

It was in Charles' ninth year that Amelie realized that while she had saved her brother's life, it might have been at the cost of his soul.

Charles had few friends; though the village had others his age, his odd coloring and strange attachment to his older sister made Charles an outcast among them. Amelie allowed him to bring home a kitten, a small gray thing, and was happy to see her brother laughing, some of his long-dormant spirit returning to him at last. The cat, named Chat, followed Charles everywhere, and he fed it bits of food from the table as Amelie pretended not to notice. Charles had finally found a friend.

Amelie liked the small cat as well. He was a good mouser, good company on a cold night, and good entertainment for brother and sister alike. Amelie's only frustration with Chat was in his very nature as a cat: he was constantly underfoot, wanting to be a part of whatever the people were doing. One day, as Amelie was making her way down the stairs to fix breakfast, Chat bounded down in front of her, turned back, and ran up between Amelie's legs. She shrieked as she fell down the remaining stairs.

The town's doctor came by and set her leg in a cast, prescribing some pills for the pain and recommending with a smile that she avoid stairs for the time being. Amelie thanked him and sent him on his way, asking that he send Charles in to her. The boy entered almost immediately, kneeling by the side of her bed. They chatted for a few moments, Amelie assuring him several times that she would be fine, that her leg would heal, before she noticed that his companion was nowhere in sight.

"Where is Chat?" she asked, looking around.

"Gone," Charles answered simply.

Amelie frowned. "Did he run off? We can look for him down by the river; just let me get my crutches."

Charles shook his head and put a hand on her wrist. "He didn't run off. I killed him."

Amelie let out a small shriek and Charles leaned back, looking up at her in surprise. "You did what? Why would you ever-"

Charles' strange yellow eyes flashed. "He hurt you," he stated. "He hurt you and he might have done it again, so I killed him." He cocked his head to one side and smiled up at her. "I buried him by the river. I even said a prayer for his soul."

Amelie could feel herself shaking but forced a calm breath in and out. "Charles," she said as evenly as she could, "you can't do things like that. Chat didn't mean to hurt me. I think that I scared him more falling down the stairs than anything else. I want you to promise me that you won't hurt any more animals."

Charles focused his intense eyes on hers. "I promise," he swore.

It was only a week later that Amelie knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Charles was different. Brother and sister had gone into town for groceries, and though Amelie was doing better with her crutches after a week's practice, she was still fairly wobbly. They had just finished their shopping and were loading it into the back of Amelie's small car when a man neither of them had seen before approached the car.

He smiled at them, introduced himself as Peter, and helped them load the bags into the car. Amelie thanked him for his help and hobbled around to her side of the car as Charles ran to put the shopping cart back in the return.

Peter had her pressed up against the side of the car, kind smile turned twisted and ugly, before Charles had even disappeared from view.

"Don't make a sound," he said. "Just get into the car and drive away."

"Charles," Amelie tried to say, but Peter pressed tightly against her throat, and it came out as a choked gasp. Tears were welling in Amelie's eyes as Peter pulled away.

"Get in," he said roughly. Amelie stepped to the side, hands shaking as she reached for her keys, but a surprised grunt from Peter quickly had her turning back around.

Peter was on the ground, sprawled out, a small knife sticking from his back. Judging from the area, it would have pierced a lung and perhaps nicked his heart. Amelie fell to his side, her medical training making her forget her fear, and reached for his neck.

The man was dead.

Amelie looked up, both grateful for her savior and worried because they had killed the man, and almost sobbed when her eyes landed on Charles, who was looking at her with those unreadable eyes.

"Are you angry?" he asked after a moment.

Amelie could only shake her head. "Get in the car," she told him, mind framing and reframing theories as quickly as it could. Her only goal since Charles had been born was to make his life better; he was the way he was because of her and her medicines. Though it had been done to save his life, she had caused this change in him. She had not found a way to reverse it, so she would have to find a way to control it, to control Charles.

They drove back to the house, where Amelie spent a few calm minutes ordering Charles to wash up and put on clean clothing. She burned both of their bloody garments in the back yard, then packed up the house; not everything, of course, but the necessities that they would need. The last thing that she took was a small silver case, lined inside with cut foam with indentations for three small vials. She took the vials she would need from a shelf in her lab, packed them carefully, and placed the case in the car. Charles was already back in the passenger seat.

They drove away from the small house that had been their home for four years without a backwards glance. Though they had left most of their possessions behind, both knew that they would never return to the quiet little valley.

Amelie drove for hours with no particular destination in mind, but when they reached the small village outside of Roussillon it felt as if they had been drawn there. Amelie quietly settled them into a small house on the outskirts of town, rented from a local woman for the month, and pulled out the silver case.

She had, of course, made more of the medicine for Charles, just in case he relapsed again. Though her original medication hadn't worked the second time, Amelie knew that the new formula would have an effect if it were needed again. In her heart, though, she had always known that it would come to this, that Charles wouldn't get sick again, that there would be a different use for the medication.

Amelie picked up the scalpel with shaking fingers, coated it in the green liquid, and cut a faint line over her own heart.

The pain struck her first, the blinding, white-hot tendrils shooting from the incision she'd made. It was over in a matter of seconds, but it was enough time for her to fall to the floor. Charles came in, then, and stopped when he took in the bleeding line on her chest, the pale green liquid in the vials, the scalpel on the table.

"Why?" he asked her, focusing his strange eyes on her chest, his fingers touching the wound. "Why would you want to become like me?"

Amelie could see her skin beginning to pale, to mottle as she reached out to touch her brother's face. "You will never be alone," she said fiercely. "I will stay with you. I will protect you."

In the end, Amelie's transformation took three days, much like Charles' own had. The only difference between them was Amelie's strikingly red hair, a sharp contrast to Charles' fine white color. She had strengthened and her leg had healed; her sight was clearer than it had ever been. Her sense of scent had never been sharper.

She was just as Charles was now.

They left the town a week into their month-long rental of the house, no longer needing the shelter. They simply walked out on the seventh day, leaving behind car and clothing and everything else that Amelie had grabbed from their house except for that small silver box.

They chose the others together until they were seven. Getting to seven was a difficult task that took all of the remaining serum that Amelie had; though it had caused no illness to either her or Charles, the medicine seemed to kill two out of every three people she tried. They lived in a system of caves on the outskirts of town; they were comfortable there in this form as they never would have been as a regular human, though it was damp. They still required food, but Amelie noticed that these bodies required little if any water and did, in fact, react negatively to too much liquid on the skin. They had found that out accidentally, when Mat had fallen into the river; by the time they had gotten him out, with ropes and pulleys, his skin had washed away, leaving him screaming and seeping the green-brown fluid that now passed for their blood. They were more careful, after that.

And so it was, for a while; the group lived in the caves, stealing what they needed and caring for each other. Their immense strength meant that predators were no longer a concern, and Amelie noticed that the others, all men, looked to her as their leader, as the one in charge. Strangely, though they were all adults, the men all respected Charles as her second-in-command, though he was merely a child.

Everything changed, again, when Arno brought home another.

Arno had already given the new man the medicine, which frightened Amelie; she had only just noticed that their bodies produced the serum and had shared it with the group a few nights ago. It was the first time that this version of the serum had been tested, and it had been without her approval, without her observation. Despite all of that, the man survived the transformation and sat up on the third day, looking around and blinking.

Amelie hurried to assure him that they meant him no harm and tried to explain what she and the others had managed to figure out. It was no use, though; five days later, the man vanished, and no amount of searching could find him or bring him back. Amelie chastised Arno and warned the others about turning people without talking it through first.

She heard stories, drifting from out of town, about a strange man with yellow eyes and sickly skin who terrorized towns up and down the coast of France, who seemed to somehow be amassing an army of those like him, wreaking havoc and causing trouble. Three months after the man disappeared, the report came that the man and his army had razed an entire town, killing its inhabitants and burning all of the buildings.

Amelie wondered in horror what she had created, and at first it kept her awake at nights. It wasn't necessarily the others that got to her, in the end; it was the sight of Charles, smiling as he pestered one of the other men in their group, and the man ruffling his hair fondly. It was the knowledge that, while she might have created a group of monsters, she would do it all again to save her brother, to bring him to this happiness.

Amelie would do anything for Charles. She had always known that, and it would always be true, no matter the cost.


End file.
